Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: A look at the many red herrings

A school utility worker mops a mural depicting the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, at the Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino High School campus at Makati city east of Manila, Philippines, April 8, 2014. Exactly a month ago Tuesday, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 passenger plane, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, mysteriously went missing with 239 passengers and crew on board, and a massive search involving several countries is now focused in the vast Indian Ocean.

If the signals detected deep in the Indian Ocean are truly from the wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, they ultimately will close the book on a frustrating long list of false leads in the effort to find the jet. Here are the most prominent moments in which hopes of solving the tragic aviation mystery were dashed:

March 8: Around 9:00 a.m., more than an hour after Malaysia Airlines reported the Boeing 777 missing, rumors spread on the Internet that the plane had safely landed at an airport in southern China. These quickly turn out to be baseless. Later in the day, search planes spot two long oil slicks in the South China Sea, but tests later show the oil was not from an aircraft.

March 9: Vietnam says a search plane spots objects in the South China Sea suspected to be from the plane, but they turn out to be unrelated. Malaysia's air force chief says there were indications on military radar that the jet may have turned back from its flight path and crossed the Malay peninsula after its communications systems went off. Authorities intensify their search on the western side of the country and in the northern part of the Strait of Malacca.

March 10: Searchers spot a floating yellow object, spurring speculation it could be a life raft, but it is found to be moss-covered piece of sea trash.

March 22: A search plane spots a floating wooden pallet that appeared to be surrounded by straps of different lengths and colors, but spotters were unable to photograph it. A New Zealand military aircraft tried to find the objects for closer inspection, but found only clumps of seaweed.

April 14: With no signals detected for six days amid speculation the black boxes' batteries have expired, the head of the joint search mission says an underwater submersible was launched to scan the seafloor for remains of the plane.